The traditional shadow play is a cultural treasure of Chinese folk art

combining sculpture

painting

drama

music

performances

and other arts

and it was once considered as a spiritual food. However

studies show that traditional shadow play is on the verge of extinction. Therefore

to protect and uphold the culture of traditional shadow play

numerous researchers combine shadow play with current computer technologies

inherit the shadow charming artistry

and create the possibility of a live shadow protection-digital shadow play. In this study

we manipulate the digital shadow play and the traditional shadow play interaction using Kinect and color shadow play control rods

respectively. We also analyze the essential technologies for the input of the interaction and the output of the digital shadow play actions. According to the characteristics of the Kinect depth map and control rod movements

the regions for the control rods are segmented to serve as mask basis in detecting the rod head position in a frame. The colors marks in the control rods are trained in advance using the Nave Bayesian method to obtain a corresponding color category table. These marks are identified while a single frame is detected to calculate the rod head positions. Each rod is set through the control of the Kalman filter to provide stable control information for shadow animation. After analyzing the traditional shadow play action characteristics and the human body joints

we organize the digital shadow figure into a joint hierarchical model by controlling the three rods. We analyze the action principles of the current model combined with the input control information in terms of moving

waving arms

and changing legs for the shadow play figure. The shadow animation is then rendered by OpenGL to present to the user. Facing the Kinect

a user holds three rods to control the shadow play figure rendered by the computer. Along with the rods' movements

the shadow play figure correspondingly acts through movements

such as arbitrarily moving

waving arms

and changing legs

in the shadow scene of Wukong picking peaches. User surveys show that our control method is similar to the traditional shadow play

except that ours is simpler to operate. In addition

the animation in our control method is interesting and beautiful. This study proposes a novel way to interact with the digital shadow play as a traditional interaction simulation. This strategy allows nonprofessionals to experience controlling traditional shadow figures. Compared with other digital shadow play interactions

the proposed method has more traditional shadow play culture efforts.